[Sickbay]: Round Seven Scans and Vaccines

[ten_fwd_npcs]

If this is your first trip to Sickbay, you may be surprised to see that it's a fairly ordinary-looking hospital. There are no terrifying devices or humming machines you might see in a sci-fi thriller. The biobeds along the walls are equipped with biofunction monitors, but look fairly standard. Instead of silver trays filled with metal tools and sawblades, there are an array of small devices that look as harmless as cell phones. As for the staff, they're all well-groomed and friendly. As a matter of fact, all personnel look harmless. Well, perhaps excluding the sun avatar, but Trance Gemini is as skilled as the Starfleet officers.

If you're new to the ship, no doubt you've been escorted here by the security team. Nothing to worry about, the doctors just want to make sure you aren't carrying any viruses or are vulnerable to terrible space disease. Once you've been checked over — a quick scan from a tricorder and any necessary vaccines — you'll be free to go. Lollipops are optional.

"All right, step on in," one of them calls out as you enter. "Don't be afraid. It's just a scan and a hypospray, nothing to worry about."


[ooc: Sickbay is, as always, OTA! For new characters: tagging isn't mandatory but IC going to sickbay is. If you'd prefer to skip threading with one of our doctors, you can handwave that your character got a clean bill of health and a shot and were sent on their merry way. For those who are tagging: if you have a preference which doctor sees your character, please specify in the subject line of your tag who you would like (Simon Tam is not available this time). There is a post up in the OOC comm with more details if you have any questions.]

Comments

[ten_fwd_npcs]

Beverly, invested in what she is doing, calls for him to come in when she hears him knock.

It won't be for several minutes before she looks up and sees his feat of acrobatics, which causes her to double-take immediately.

"H-how can I help you?" she asks, once she's composed herself.

[themerlin]

Merlin entered, and smiled, sitting once more on mid-air until she had time. He had the patience. As soon as she noticed him, however, he stood normally and swept a bow.

"Greetings, milady. I hope I did not startle thee too much. I wish to inquire about volunteering in this hall of healing." he bowed his head to her.

[ten_fwd_npcs]

Well, that doesn't happen every day.

"I admit, I was a little startled," she answers wryly, bemused by his way of speaking. He sounds like a Shakespearean character. "It's not every day someone floats into my office."

She sets her PADD down and pockets her hands, appraising him not unlike a certain captain might. "Are you a healer of some kind?"

[themerlin]

"Forgive me then, I pray thee. I am an old man and muchly set in my ways, but I will seek to stray from them, an it makes you and others more comfortable." Yes, he really wanted to help, and was willing to bend that legendarily stiff neck to do so.

"I am, milady. I am called Merlin, and I am a wizard. One of the types of magic I can do is a form of healing." In truth the way she appraised him reminded him of Arthur's gaze and made him smile yet fonder.

[ten_fwd_npcs]

There is a pause.

"Merlin, the wizard," she repeats levelly. Oh, she knows the stories. Not so long ago she even had Robin Hood in her sickbay. But Merlin, a wizard, who can do healing by magic? She laughs quickly; it sounds short, and half-crazed. "There are many types of healing that could be mistaken for magic, but I've never seen real magic before."

She looks skeptical.

[themerlin]

"That would be the one, milady." He watched her, and concern flashed over his face at her laugh. Then he smiled at her comment. "Well, milady, as I understand it, science is just magic given limits. So, perhaps you have, and just have not known it as what it was."

His voice was gentle as he spoke.

[ten_fwd_npcs]

"You're serious," she exhales, a look of surprise on her face. "The Merlin, who served in King Arthur's court?"

If he does come from a world or a time where medicine has not come as far as it has here, what he says could certainly be true. Human beings have a need to define things in simple terms as they develop, and that's simply part of the growth process. Beverly at least has the tact to keep this thought process to herself, but the look of skepticism remains.

[themerlin]

"Aye, milady. Raised the boy from a sprout myself, I did. Hoped to make him a good king, and he was, for a short while. Everything ends, though." His lips had a bitter twist for a long moment as he looked down, then he forced himself to smile and look up at her.

Merlin eyed her and knew that look on her face. "Okay, may I show you then?" he chuckled. "You'll need something to scan, to make sure I pull no fast ones, and to tell me the name of something you like, something you can't get here on board, but would really like to have. An item, a type of food, a medicine. Tell me it's name and what it means to you."

He held up a hand. "But first, get your scanner and make sure. I want you to know I am not lying, milady."

[ten_fwd_npcs]

She squints at him. The emotion seems real enough; no matter who he is, he believes he is Merlin, and that he knew the King of mythical Camelot. But it couldn't be possible. Even with Q's abilities, there are a hundred reasons why this couldn't be possible.

She folds her arms across her chest, leaning back against her desk. "This isn't usually the sort of exam I give sickbay applicants. However..."

She sighs and straightens up, pulling a tricorder from her coat pocket.

"I have been asked to do stranger things. How exactly do you intend to show me?" she asks cautiously. And then adds after a pause: "Rulduvian silk. I saw a bolt of it once, in a pale blue color that almost seemed to glimmer in the light, but the price was too rich for my blood. Still, I've never seen anything quite like it since."

[themerlin]

"Thank you for allowing me, milady." Merlin listened to her, watching her with the instrument.

"One of the neater magics I can perform is to pull things out of possibility. Or, rather, by science terms, to use energy to convert localized sub-matter into specific items using the localized thought patterns and faith of the person asking for them."

He pointed to her. "Your thoughts on the item, what it felt like, what it looked like, how it made you feel, create an imprint, a weight in time and space. I can't read your thoughts, but by asking you to think about it, I can use magic to touch that memory and that moment, and then, out of the possibilities, I can pull that item."

He nodded to her. "Whenever you are ready, madame."

[ten_fwd_npcs]

She blinks at him. Though he tries putting the process into scientific terms, which Beverly has to give him credit for, what he's suggesting shouldn't make sense. Localized thought patterns, faith, co-mingling with sub-matter to create something out of nothing?

"All right," she says within a laugh, clearly dubious. She'll at least give him a chance. "I suppose I'm as ready as ever to have a bolt of silk pulled out of my memory."

[themerlin]

And Merlin smirked at her, eyes glowing, now a brilliant rich red, not like blood, but lively! Then they were a golden color, making the light itself dim in comparison, the true color of the gold metal. And then they were a dark black, deeper than normal black, as if no color and no light could escape them.

They cycled through those colors like a spinning kaleidoscope as he held out his hands in front of him and reached. And spoke softly, clearly. The language he spoke was old and ancient and dead before Latin rose to use, but it was vibrant to his tongue, calling to the mind's eye images of towering citadels that shone with the color and feel of nature, and of a people who shone with faith, truth, and hope, and a land long lost to time. And in the moments he spoke, he reached and let his will flow out into possibility.

And then he was pulling his hands back out of mid-air and pulling with them a long bolt on a fabric holder of purest blue Rulduvian silk, and placing it on her desk.

His eyes faded to normal, and he settled back, a smile on his face, even as he rubbed his nose and pulled a small bottle out of his shirt pocket. Mind you, his shirt had not had a pocket before, and the moment after he pulled it out,m it did not again, but he did what he did, did Merlin. He took a long swig, emptying it almost, and set it down to drink more of it he needed it. bringing things from elsewhen and where out of sheer possibility, was sometimes hard. "There you go, milady."

[ten_fwd_npcs]

The way his eyes change is almost frightening. Beverly watches with no small measure of alarm, but her training as well as her experience serves her well enough in the moment not to forget herself. She studies her tricorder, never letting her attention stray from it or Merlin.

Once he has done it, she can hardly believe her readings. She needs to reach out and touch the silk, to feel it for herself. She exhales, and it sounds something like an awed "My!"

"I don't believe it!" she says, shaking her head. Her focus moves to the small bottle. "What is that?"

[themerlin]

The tricorder would show an unknown kind of energy, and more, when it analyzed it, it would be able to detect three disparate kinds of energy all mixing and merging and forming as he cast his spell. And when it was done, she would have been able to tell the bolt of fabric was genuine.

Merlin chuckled and shrugged. "Most do not, and thus it is that magic is gone from most worlds." People forgot, or powerful organizations drove magic out, and then it became a fairy tale and no one believed in those, did they? And thus did magic pass away.

"2400 year old mead, milady. Have some?" He held the bottle out to her and her scanner, if it could read such things, would tell her that he had told the truth. The bottle was a stone bottle carved better than any stone tools could make it, without seam or mark upon it. And the contents was a mead that was exactly twenty-four hundred and thirty-three years old.

[ten_fwd_npcs]

"Mead?" she repeats, eyebrow arched. "Don't tell me that is the source of your magic?"

Beverly hasn't heard of drunken kung fu, but if she had she might have taken this opportunity to make a joke.

"Source of your magic, listen to me," she mutters, pressing her hand to her forehead. "I don't know how you did it, but I can't argue with your results. But how would something like this help medically?"

[themerlin]

Merlin laughed. "Hardly. My power hails from two different sources. Firstly, my heritage. Secondly, from magic emitted by various sources." He smirked.

"That was just to prove magic exists. I can heal, though only simple things, most times. It is harder for me than other magics, for only part of my magic will work so, but it can be done." He nodded. "In addition, if the replicators can create clippings from known plants, I can use such in healing salves and potions, to aid those who need it."

[ten_fwd_npcs]

She'd be interested in hearing more about your heritage, Merlin. However, she bypasses the topic of magic momentarily, focusing instead on what he next says.

Her smile is knowing, and more than a little proud.

"I think you'll find medicine has progressed considerably since the age of Arthur the King," she says, some humor in her voice. And then: "Would you now permit me to show you how?"

[themerlin]

"I'd be most interested in seeing it, aye. And perhaps in showing you more of mine." His eyes glinted in warmth, admiration, and just possibly a bit of challenge.

"I am in your hands, milady."

[ten_fwd_npcs]

And they are good hands to find himself in. Her medicine may not be quite so impressive as pulling a memory out of thin air and making it real, but she's confident in it and her skills in using it.

She smiles pertly.

"I would like to see more of yours, particularly before I let you anywhere near my sickbay," she says, intending to sound threatening but it's half-hearted at best. It's maybe the same tone she'd use to warn a young woman off of hurting her son in any way. "But first I need to know if you can administer hyposprays and work a tricorder. They're quite simple, once you know how."

[themerlin]

Merlin bowed to her. "Of course, Milady Doctor." And that time there were almost audible capitals to her name the way he said it.

"I'd be honored to try. I have since arriving used a PADD, and the computer access panels. If you'll lend me thy knowledge and teach me thy way, I will do my best top honor thee and this vessel with my service."

[ten_fwd_npcs]

She chuckles lowly, shaking her head once.

"Call me Beverly, or Dr. Crusher, please," she says.

Not that the audible capitals aren't flattering, but there's no need to stand on ceremony with a living legend. She lets out a small puff of air, and nods over her shoulder to the sickbay entrance. "Follow me."

If he can keep up, she'll walk him through how everything works, one step at a time. It's entirely possible they may need a little ... magic sometime in their future, especially when it comes to treating patients who claim to heal by magic themselves. But that's for the future to say.

[themerlin]

"Thank you, Beverly. Never have I been taught by so capable, nor so beautiful, a teacher. I am in thy hands."

He grinned at her, eyes dancing.

And he followed her, and he learned.